Vitamin P posted:

The episode drifted far too close to torture porn for me, especially 'disciplining' the house AI and how long the suicide scene was. And the twist doesn't even compare to White Bear, I'm a pretty dumb person but I twigged quite early that the guru was working the guy and after the 'AIs exist' point was shown the general direction of the plot was obvious.

The PUA narrative could sustain an episode, with a bit more incidental depth to it, and so could Blocking potentially, but this felt like two B-list ideas being smashed together alongside how annoying ubiquitous christmas songs are and grim-for-the-sake-of-it torture. And it's nit-picky, but a sign of how clearly it was two unrelated stories, temporary Blocking being available would hugely change the pick-up game and it wasn't even referenced. Especially weak because Black Mirror is usually so good at incidental effects of technology on society.

Overall it's more Black Mirror and was better than 99% of what's televised but still, not great.